Ladies and Gentleman,

                     Today, June 24^th 2008, we celebrate 190 years since the birth of Ion Ionescu de la Brad, the founder of agricultural education and research in our country and the tribune of the peasantry.

By his personality, universally acknowledged as early as 1893 (G. Vapereau in Dictionaire universal des contemporains ed. Hachette, Paris) and confirmed by UNESCO in 1996, he earns his place among the top men of science in the agricultural domain of his time: M. Dombasle, A. Thaer, A. Joung, V. V. Dokuceav, J. Boussingnault and others whom he even surpassed in specific fields. (A. Vasiliu 1991).

                     On his 150^th birth anniversary in 1968, Ion Ionescu de la Brad was considered the greatest Romanian agronomist ever by D. Davidescu ( Contemporanul, June 26^th, 1968).

                     Today, when we celebrate the passage of 190 years since the same event, we regard Ion Ionescu de la Brad as the greatest Romanian agrarian manager ever, as well.

A few biographical data: he was born in Roman, on June 24^th, 1818, the son of archdeacon and furrier Ion Isacescu who, starting from 1823, becomes the manager of the Brad hermitage estate where little Ion spends his childhood. After the early education received in Roman and upon the change of his name to Ionescu, 14 years of age, he leaves for Iasi and attends grammar school at Treisfetite ( Three Hierarchs). Here his teacher and mentor, Gheorghe Asachi, appreciates his ingenuity, introduces him to his family whom he spends some of his free time with, the lady teaches him music and the teacher urges him to new realms of knowledge and even theatre, giving him parts in a school theatre group. As the years pass, a high education institution is founded in Iasi in 1834, the Mihaileanu Academy under the patronage of the Prince Mihail Sturdza. Young Ionescu joins the Academy in 1835 and in 1836, as he was a very good student, he becomes a stipendiary (benefiting from a scholarship) and also starts working as a tutor (teacher) with the upper-secondary students. In 1837 he is instated as a substitute teacher for Romanian, Rhetoric and World History classes, also working as a secretary at the Academy. It is a situation involving several various activities which he will undertake for long periods of time in the future, proving encyclopedic abilities.

The bright young man was seen by his teachers as a future valuable literature professor.

Upon concluding his education he already had had important acclaimed contributions such as 7 or 10 translation works from French, Greek and Latin. Moreover he had learnt Turkish, English and German and later on he would also learn Italian.

                     The conclusion of his education overlaps two major requirements of the time: the first referred to the Prince’s wish for a skilled agronomist trained abroad that would ensure the increase of the revenues from his estates. The second was the undeclared wish of Romanian peasants to free themselves from the land slavery. A third coincidence emerges that will prove favourable, that is his French and Civil Law professor, Maisonnable’s return to France. He will therefore begin his journey to the “far-away land”, as Vasile Alecsandri used to refer to the young men traveling by post coach for more than 20 days and 20 nights to western countries in search of an education.

                     This is how, in the spring of 1838, he becomes a student at the Farm-School at Roville, an actual agricultural institute established and patronized by Mathieu de Dombasle, a professional chemist, passionately fond of agriculture and inventor of farming machines and tools. He is the one that designed the technical parameters for the modern plough. He wrote valuable works related to agriculture. In this school they used to teach and practice all agricultural disciplines including accounting, making and fitting up of the machines, animal husbandry including bees and making sugar out of beet (7% of which was sugar) in the school’s factory.

                     The patron, professor was so appreciated that not only did he have students from almost every country in Europe but he also received the visits of great personalities. On such an occasion, the king of France handed him in the gold medal of the French Society for Agriculture. In less than 2 years, the brilliant Romanian student concludes his training at Roville which he will treasure as a most significant symbol, adding it to his name in the expression “old Roville student”. He leaves for Auxerres (Champagne) where he learns about wine growing and preparation, especially the making of champagne he will later honour his benefactor, Prince Mihail Sturdza with for whom he prepared after his return to the country the first Romanian champagne out of the vines at Socola.

                     He goes back to Paris and learns about sericulture in a nearby school. He keeps on with botany and politic economy, ending with chemistry, physics and natural history at Sorbone. He had no preoccupations during his stay in France other than studying. He built up an extensive library. In his free time, together with colleagues and teachers he traveled through villages, French estates, including Alsace, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany and later on England, Italy and almost every European country except Russia. He brought back ten notebooks that were not preserved to this day.

                     Coming back home in 1840 with all the certificates and qualifications awarded, as if willing to put all that to the test, Prince Mihail Sturdza , also known to have been a learned man of his time and a sort of enlightener, sent him to the stock farm at Cioara about which Ionescu writes with vigorous humour: “Mihail Sturdza, who had spent a lot of money on my studies, sent me to the countryside where his cattle were and made a cowherd out of me! Master-cowherd, to be honest, but still a cowherd. I would eat polenta and cheese and obey the orders of the tenants that supervised me. I worked a year as a cowherd and I took such good care of the cattle that I even fed up two herds which I sold in Pest and Vienna. I returned to the prince with the satchel full of gold and he was so pleased that he didn’t send me back to the farm but kept me at court making me the chief manager of his estates.” This is how the great agronomist and manager first made a name for himself in a world of hereditary privilege and purchased office. Mihail Sturdza himself was accused of corruption and unlawfulness. Starting from 1842, after two years working for his benefactor, the man who had mastered professional knowledge had also assumed the spirit of an age of change and became pervious to the calls of the country, of the peasants that he would later refer to as “the Romanian people”. He therefore asks and is granted the permission by the prince to introduce the agricultural lecture at the Mihaileanu Academy, which had not become a scientific lecture in universities other than those in more civilized western countries. He would give 2 lectures every week, when he came and when he left bringing state-of-the-art aids. During this period he joins the Medical and Naturalists’ Society in Iasi. He engages in public activities by delivering speeches and writing articles and thus becomes a public figure in Moldova. Interested in spreading the knowledge validated by practice, as he liked to say, he translates and publishes the first Romanian version of a work about “The White Cattle of England”, already renowned for raising cattle. He inserts several observations and conclusions from his own activity at Cioara as the genuine scientist that he is into the translation.

                     A special event takes place in 1845 at Manjina, under the patronage of the “uncle”, Costache Negri where they celebrate not only Saints Constantine and Helen (his sister’s name) but also the Romanian soul and spirit. This was, according to Vasile Alecsandri, the second great bridge, after that of the Romanian students in Paris, that the Romanians from the Romanian provinces, which were no less separated from each other than China was from the rest of the world due to its walls, crossed together. There they got to know each other, shared joys and pains and, more importantly, established a new Romanian public opinion. Ionescu met Balcescu and they agreed upon the necessity of appropriation of peasants with compensation, shared knowledge and great hopes for the future. This is why, after the provisional revolutionary government was established in Bucharest in 1848, Balcescu, together with Eliad and Tel agreed to call the most competent Romanian in matters of the peasants and ask him get involved in the Property Committee. Ion Ionescu recalls those times and writes: “At the call of that time I left everything (he was at Sabaoani, working for the son of prince Sturdza) and ran to help and support the most vital interests of our people”. He walked in full night to Mircesti to counsel with Alecsandri. He encouraged him, gave him money for the road and a horse-drawn wagon that took him as far as Focsani. In Bucharest, he led the proceedings of the Property Committee made up of representatives of the boyars and the peasants and enforced several fundamental principles, among which the state’s right of expropriation of two thirds of the boyars’ estates and appropriation of the peasants with compensation. When the Turks suppressed the revolution in Muntenia he was arrested as one of the fifteen dangerous revolutionaries. After a time spent at the Danube and then in Transylvania, where he met Avram Iancu, he withdrew to Constantinople where he hoped to find support for the problems of Romanian peasants. With the help of Ion Ghica, then on diplomatic mission on behalf of the provisional government, Ion Ionescu becomes contributor at the French newspaper Journal de Constantinopole. With the intuition of a genius, Ion Ionescu combines his three arts, the diplomatic abilities of the revolutionary with the skill of the scientist and journalism. He requires and receives an authorization probably consult his hi fellow countrymen arrested at Brusa and casts an aura of his wisdom over this action. He spends several months around Brusa where he picks up information and draws up the first monographic work, “Agricultural trip to Brusa”. The newspaper Ion Ionescu worked for published his work in serialized form and then in booklet form. This study which most likely was the first of the kind in Eastern Europe, resounded among the Turkish officials. The echo was so forceful that he was asked to devise a similar study tackling the field of Dobrogea, then under Turkish authority. After Dorogea, having also written a political study apart from the scientific one, he studies Tesalia through letters to and from Ion Ghica and Nicolae Balcescu and writes “About Agrarian Tesalia, the way it is and the way it could be”. He concludes with Asia Minor. All the four studies gather approximately 500 pages and were serialized and published as booklets, thus becoming known to some specialists in Western Europe.

                     Following these successes, the Turk ministers want to promote him to a state office but some antirevolutionary marionettes settled in Constantinople strongly oppose the enterprise so that only the sultan’s intervention brings about recognition for Ion Ionescu’s undeniable merits and grants him membership in the Imperial Counsel for Agriculture, the position as a headmaster of the San Stefano Agricultural School and expert of the sultan’s estates. The great vizier, Reshid Pasa offers him a position as a manager, we would call it, of his 20 estates in order to benefit from his services. The salary was 10% of the income, approximately Lei 2000, if the income considered is the one previous his taking on. The salary was low but he could not refuse and he exceeds all expectations. After the first year, the income is four times higher and in the years to come incomes are more than ten times higher that the original one. This is what made believe that Ion Ionescu is the best Romanian agrarian manager ever and probably in the world, up to him. This aspect is worth analyzing in the documents of the time. It is worth mentioning that the great Romanian scholar got these results not by abusing the 1000 Greek peasant families he worked with but making sure they too benefited from advantageous arrangements, that is to say, two thirds of the production. He lent them money to buy cattle, tools, seeds, repair or build houses, taught them about sericulture, truck farming, drained a marsh for them, taught them to irrigate plants, fixed the roads, built schools and a church on his expense. The Greek peasants called him “prince Iovanescu”. Indeed he was the prince of the souls of these peasants as he would be for the Romanian peasants later on. In 1857, when he left Turkey, he handed over 24 estates to Reshid Pasa, that is he had bought 4 more estates.

                     We consider that the achievements in the Ottoman Empire allowed Ion Ionescu to turn the exile into the climax of his life. These achievements are so important that we reckon that if, through some sort of miracle, they could have been applied, implemented in the Romanian Principalities, things would have been different with the difficult issue of the peasants, the appropriation would have taken place so as not to force prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to resort to a coup d’etat and, of course, the monstrous coalition wouldn’t have had reasons to overthrow the lord of the union and of the first Romanian national state.

                     But history took another turn. Alexandru Ioan Cuza himself praised him, which is why he consulted him before promulgating the rural law in 1864. He named him inspector for agriculture assigning him the task of supervising the implementation of the reform. The great manager devised a lordly order and worked so well that between autumn 1864 and Saint George in 1865, the reform was applied, without fighting and avoiding unlawfulness however, which allowed landowners to give up the worst lands and only a small part of them, by no means two thirds as the law stated. Most likely, these aspects were supposed to be monitored by other institutions.

                     It could be said that Ion Ionescu was unanimously acknowledged by his generation and the next as one of the great learned men of the 19^th century, whose reputation went beyond the borders of our country (A.Vasiliu). In our country he was and still is regarded as the most prominent agronomist, economist and farm manager. He wrote, applied or founded agricultural disciplines such as: pedology, agrotechnics, phytotechnics, vegetal physiology, truck farming, floriculture, vine growing, agrarian economy and accounting, etc.

                     He was a pioneer in the following activities in our country: professor of agriculture, rural economy and agrarian accounting in middle and higher education;

-                      he established the first small, average and large farms in the Ottoman Empire and in our country;

-                      he founded agriculture schools for school children and training courses for grownups;

-                      he promoted the introduction of agriculture lessons in pedagogical schools and seminaries so that teachers and priests would be able to teach children and peasants agriculture;

-                      he devoted his whole life to the cause of Romanian peasants, to free them from their status as slaves to land, money (usury), ignorance;

He may have introduced double accounting in agriculture in Turkey. He applied both in Turkey and our country a more complex method of monographic research for the study of life in the countryside and specific activities, becoming famous all over Europe. In all his works, including public speeches, he quoted from several Romanian and foreign authors, proving an extensive bibliographical research, in all domains concerning agriculture, commerce, law, banking, loan, finances, etc.

                     His activity was governed by practice and theories validated through practice, bearing in mind the Latin saying: “Praecepta docent, exempla trahunt” ( theories teach, examples persuade).

                     He argued that the purpose of agricultural activities is profit. Also, the success of every business resides in the relationship between the owner and the employees, which he brilliantly proved through the exceptional management of the farms established at Brad and in the Ottoman Empire that allowed him to increase the income from the 20 estates of the grand vizier Reshid Pasa ten times.

                     He supported and applied Darwin’s evolutionism and fought against the theory of Malthus and the decreasing fertility theory. He remarked the influence climate, vegetation and landscape have on soil content as well as the importance of forest curtains for the protection of the soil and cultivated plants before Dockuceav. He was the first in the world to have set up such curtains at Brad. He had pointed out the need for forestry research 3 years before a specialized German institution did. He introduced technical and scientific agricultural terminology in Romanian, as well as terms from animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, ranging from farm manager to veterinary, botanical names for plants, statistical terminology and several banking, loans and financial terms.

                     There are plenty to be said about the great scholar who wrote 45 books and booklets, more than 500 articles in all the newspapers and magazines of the time, including Transylvania and a rough overall of 18,000 pages. The natural question follows: What is it that makes Ion Ionescu so up to date? Specialists dealing with studying and revaluating past and even ancient works argue that they are praised, especially their literary dimension, due to their matching the modern taste, which I think is right. I remember one of Martial’s epigrams:

“I shall not ask you how you’re doing

For I know the answer: nothing much”,

And here is a quatrain by Omar Khayyam, a Persian poet and philosopher who wrote the most touching quatrains in the world in the late 11^th century an early 12^th century:

“Of happy turns of fortune take your fill,

Seek pleasure’s couch, or wine-cup as you will;

Allah regards not if you sin, or saint it,

So take your pleasure, be it good or ill.”

     or,

 „Man is the whole creation’s summary,

The precious apple of great wisdom’s eye;

The circle of existence is a ring,

Whereof the signet is humanity.”

    or,

„Behold the stately cedar with arms towards the sky

He does not beg but capture beams does try

Though water cans and lilies have tongues more than we know,

Language of light and silence is all that they do show.”

Others claim that endurance is granted by the perennial aspects tackled: love, beauty, glory, peace, wisdom, etc. Philosophic and scientific works belonging to mathematics, physics, astronomy are praised for the solutions they provide to fundamental issues. Or maybe, some works raised questions some of which were answered and some others which were not. Through his universality and competence put to the service of the peasants and the entire nation, Ion Ionescu de la Brad did suggest answers to the great questions of his time and of the future. His modernity lies in the principles he founded the Romanian agricultural school on whose father he is. Thus, starting from the basic principle that progress in agriculture has to be accounted for by scientific research, theory validated by practice, he pointed out that any aspect related to technology, cultivation of plants or animal husbandry, varieties, now cross-breeds, new animal breeds have to be thoroughly analyzed in the specific climate and soil before being recommended for cultivation. Information picked up in fairs, exhibitions and demonstrations with machines and tools, new breeds, methods of rearing and breeding can always prove useful. Scientific research in agriculture, overlooked of late, was conceived by Ion Ionescu to be of strict necessity, and incumbent upon the state to subsidize it if the state is interested in agricultural progress.

                     This is a field in which the modernity of the father of Romanian agricultural sciences brings forth a requirement of national interest for making sure peasants are conferred freedom, education and civilization is still an issue today as it was in the past and by extrapolating the concept of the peasants standing for the Romanian people, it is fair to say that, according to Ion Ionescu, it is compulsory that society grants each of its individuals the status of valuable human beings living in human conditions.

                     Furthermore, we must highlight his excellent professional and social ethics that always placed public, state or citizen interests above personal ones. The public life model that he stands for should be looked up to by all public persons, ranging from simple country clerks, people working in education at all its levels to doctors and ministers, senators, and the president.

                     The tough conditions of the year 1870 that can still be noticed today are depicted by Ion Ionescu in chapter VIII of:

The Romanian Agriculture at Brad:

                     “Old customs have changed as if shaken, laws have been revised, land has become more expensive, the number of people is growing, as are needs, life is much more difficult today than it used to be and the new needs cannot be coped with by the old means of production. There is not even one person who doesn’t have to face this state of affairs, this shortage of means compared to the needs we have and even though this shortcoming affects us all, there are but few of us willing to fight and overcome it.

The shortcoming lies in that we do not know what to do, we can see how bread and meat are becoming more and more expensive each day and still we do not take action so that these things could be changed for the better. We are all aware that a country is prosperous as long as agriculture is flourishing and still we do nothing to that effect. Agriculture will flourish, production will increase and products will become cheaper when the farmer, the worker, the landlord, the tenant will know what to do in order to make life easier and more enjoyable than it is, coping with the  new circumstances that agricultural production in our country has to face.”

                     Though they were written 138 years ago, the issues tackled so perfectly apply to the present day situation that they seem to have just been printed in a local newspaper. To go even further, we must keep in mind that agriculture in our country, as well as that of other countries in Europe and worldwide, has to cope with serious system problems, in addition to any others that may arise. There are more than 6 hectares of cultivated land in our country that are often affected by drought; however, the agricultural system applied is not adjusted to these conditions. More than a century ago the “dryland” farming agricultural system was created in the Great Meadow in central North America to counteract dryness and has been incessantly improved ever since. Therefore we are not supposed to invent it but merely to get acquainted with it, test it the conditions our country offers, adjust it and make it work, according to Ion Ionescu de la Brad’s teachings. Together with protective forest curtains and irrigation, wherever applicable, this system will enable us to meet the requirements by a most efficient agricultural production. Otherwise, we shall keep complaining about the devastating effects of global warming, even though drought is a problem we’ve been dealing with since the very beginning of agricultural activity on these lands. As far as these present day issues are concerned, that the Romanian government and research representatives choose to ignore, we turn to Ion Ionescu de la Brad’s words in response:” I do not speak for myself and it follows that the authority of what I say comes from higher realms, namely from the authority of facts taking place in our country’s agriculture and that of others”. (Romanian agriculture in Putna county, 1869)

                     It is worth mentioning that in 2007, in Lisbon, the European Union Council reported overall €100 billion losses in some of the EU countries due to drought in the last 30 years, affect 800,000 square km and 100,000,000 people. I shall conclude by expressing the hope that this presentation could be taken as an incentive both for us today and for those to come after us to apply all that Ion Ionescu de la Brad, the father of the Romanian Agricultural sciences, handed down to us.

ION IONESCU DE LA BRAD

1818-2008

(Evocation on the 190^th birth anniversary)

by ION MARIN TARU

It is written in the book of time

When the peasant was the boyar’s slave

Silently waiting for his salvation

To come from up above,

Sturdza, the lord of Moldova,

Wanting fat cattle and to sell crops

Sent Ion Ionescu to study to be an agronomist

What a sublime coincidence.

Leaving for France to study

He gathered light along the years

To enlighten princes

And his own countrymen.

Thus prince Sturdza

Sends him to study more

And makes him master cowherd,

Master but cowherd still

He took care of the cattle

Selling them to Pest and Vienna

He faithfully rewards

With satchels full of gold.

Ion the agronomist is named

Ruler over lordly estates

And the young scholar

Fully fulfilled his lord’s will.

So that to train men in Moldova

As skillful as they were abroad

He established the first department for agriculture

His wish was granted by his lord.

The revolutionary uproar in the world

Pulled him towards its waves

And to serve great ideals

He made use of all he’d learnt.

The revolution stifled

Many made prisoners

The exiled finds shelter

Arriving at Istambul.

There the diplomat and scholar

Artfully become one

The exile becomes climax

For the journalist and scientist.

Going on trips he wrote

Highly praised monographies

By ministers, the high court

And the Sultan himself.

Thus the great revolutionary scholar

Becomes a member of

The Imperial council for Agriculture

Standing as a leading figure.

His skill as a manager

Amazes the whole world

When Reshid Pasa’s gold

He multiplied by ten.

He applied the knowledge of the world

With kindness in all deeds

Not at all forgotten

By any of the Greeks.

He builds homes, schools and roads

And increases Pasa’s fortune

Thus buying the Brad estate

He will always bear in mind.

   Coming home in ‘57

He finds the country in an uproar

But slaves remain slaves

Bearing the same ills.

And Ghica, a ruler now no more

Claims the peasant is better off

A free man on the estate

That is-a slave now as before.

Ion Ionescu swiftly replies

And with blunt words inquires

What use is there in freedom

Unless paralleled by justice?

Sixty-four has brought this ideal.

Cuza, the great prince abolished serfdom

The great thought turned to fact

The reform is applied, peasants embrace their freedom

As well as the whole country.

The father of agronomy and tribune of the peasants

Opened roads no one had walked before

Devoting a whole lifetime

To his much tormented people.

Thousands of pages written and laws

He ardently fought for in parliament

Turned right so many wrongs

Though inequity still lingers.

………………………………………….

His life will always stand for

The sign of open paths to take

For all that love their country

And their countrymen’s unfulfilled dreams.